The Bruins finally played like Stanley Cup Champions, smoking the Maple Leafs. My favorite moment was after Tyler Seguin scored and the crowed started chanting "Thank you, Kessel."

Jonathan Quick with 3 consecutive shutouts now as the Kings beat redhot Dallas 1-0. Kings are pretty hot themselves and are doing it without Doughty at that.

Hilarious. Hilarious. Hilarious.
OK-you lose pronger to a very, very scary eye injury the other night. But, you have already been pathetic defensively since game 5.
You get whipped at home by St. Louis after getting smoked by Washington which is weak, but beat a hot Toronto team showing life.
Then you get waxed by a dreadful (at least now) Montreal team 5-1 last night and then top that off by losing 9-8 to Winnipeg at home tonight!
9-8????
Winnipeg???
Did they even have 9 goals all year?
PATHETIC.
The Flyers comical, mythical search for a real goalie has been going on since Hextall and continues. $58 million on Bryzgalov and he can't stop a puck. Bobrovsky has been equally brutal. maybe it's the vodka.
Good God, this is so wretched.
I missed the game at work, but I'll be putting it on the DVD-R and keeping it-gotta have good comedies on DVD.
14 goals allowed in 2 games, and 25 in the last 5 games. Well worth $58 mil!

Did you see the postgame interview with Bryzgalov? He was brutal on himself - apologized to the team and players and just about everybody. He said he can stop the simple shots and the other guys are making mistakes trying to make up for his. My son and I were at the Pens game tonight and they put the score up when it was 8-7 Winnipeg.

Speaking of the Penguins, nice comeback win tonight. Malkin is looking incredible. He was pretty dominant from the opening faceoff. He had one shift where he carried the puck in the Islanders zone for about 30 seconds, weaving in and out the whole time. Brutal night for Brooks Orpik and Derek Engelland - they were on for both Islanders goals, although they did their best to give the goal scorers enough time and space to do whatever they wanted. The Isles switched goalies before the shootout - I don't think I've seen that before.

Alan

Kings beat Dallas before an announced crowd of 8,443 in Dallas, but maybe half that was in the seats because of the Ranger game. They're probably now wishing they had gone to the game.

On Satellite Hot Stove on CBC's Hockey Night In Canada tonight, they talked about a "big realignment" proposal that was apparently dead at one point but has been revived.

Six divisions would become four - one eight-team division and one seven-team division in each conference. They said teams would play home-and-home against the teams outside their division, and the rest of the games within the division. Playoff structure would revert back to being within the divisions until the conference finals.

The divisions would line up like this:


East

New York Islanders, New York Rangers, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Washington, Carolina, Tampa Bay, Florida

Detroit/Columbus, Buffalo, Toronto, Pittsburgh, Montreal, Boston, Ottawa

West

Detroit/Columbus, Winnipeg, Chicago, Dallas, Nashville, St Louis, Minnesota

Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Anaheim, Los Angeles, San Jose, Phoenix, Colorado

There's apparently still a discussion about whether Detroit or Columbus would move east. There are some good things to this plan - I like the playoff structure, although there were complaints in the old days about too many repeat matchups, and the standard "how can it be fair that team x has 96 points but misses the playoffs because the other division is weaker and a team with 84 points is in". The way things are now gives more variety in the matchups, but the reseeding kills any bracket pools you might try to participate in. The final conference is one of the rare western conferences that makes geographical sense - no Dallas or anything like that with LA and SJ and the like.

The downside? There are a few rivalries that would get torpedoed under this, notably (for me) Pittsburgh-Philadelphia, which is very intense right now. Not to mention reducing the Crosby-Ovechkin rivalry to two games each season - granted, this will only exist until one or both are retired, but I can remember people pleading to try to get Gretzky and Lemieux matched up more than twice each season. And from my own viewpoint, when MLB moved the Pirates to the Central division and away from the Mets and Philies, I lost a lot of interest because the rivalry situation was somewhat reduced. If Detroit moves east under this, you lose the rivalries with Chicago and St. Louis.

And what happens if Phoenix moves, especially if they move east? Something like Kansas City would't have a huge impact. But if they moved to Quebec? Hamilton?

They said that 20 of 30 governors have to vote for this, so it's not a slam dunk. Bettman has said if they're going to do something like this, it has to be done pretty early (I think he said December-ish) because they need time to build the schedule. Personally, I think it's probably slightly more likely that we'll see the NHL either stand pat or slide Columbus to the Southeast Division if the Phoenix situation isn't settled.

Alan

Hey-Bryzgalov stopped 24 of 25 shots, the Flyers scored 4 goals in the 3rd period and crush Carolina 5-1. Jagr remains scorching hot with 2 more goals and the big news-they didn't give up 9 goals!

This realignment would suck for me.....the total number of games between the Pens and the Devils/Rangers/Isles would go down from 21 to 6.

Might finally have to start buying Center Ice next year.

I'm behind here, but the Flyers have been scoring goals like crazy, despite trading away most of their offense. They humiliated Columbus 9-2 on Saturday night, and Cluade Giroux (2nd in the NHL in points) is a STUD. Nice to see a rookie they just called up Gustaffson a +6 on Saturday-yikes!
Still need to clean up the D and penalties but Pronger may return this week.

http://www.detnews.com/article/20111117 ... h-with-art









Alan

I attended my first hockey game in years the other night when the NY Rangers came to Nassau to play the NY Islanders.
My group had a big turnout of over 30 people from my precinct and another 20 guys from another precinct. Tickets were just $30 each and the
game was damn good but alas the Islanders lost in a close one (4-2) with the last Ranger goal coming on an open net with time expiring.

Lots of fun at the Marriott hotel bar Champs before the game.

The Penguins have just announced that Sidney Crosby will return to the lineup Monday night against the Islanders. First game action since Jan. 5.

Granted, it's not game situations, but the video I've seen from practices and workouts looked pretty impressive.

Alan

I'm glad it's against the Isles...I'll be able to watch it on TV.

It'll be interesting to see what happens when Crosby gets back into the groove - with about six minutes left, he only has two goals and two assists, and has dazzled at times. The speed, the hands and the vision all seem to be there. There doesn't seem to be any fear of traffic, either - Hamonick drilled him into the boards pretty hard and he popped back up, which was good to see.

Alan

I'm surprised that there isn't more interest in the Bruins. They won their ninth straight tonight, and are now in first place in their conference or division or whatever the hell the NHL calls it. Worst to first in 16 days.

Yeah, I heard the other day that the Bs had won eight in a row and wondered when that happened.

Alexander Semin was a healthy scratch for Washington tonight. Lots of talk about him and the idea that the Caps should move him.

Alan

Welcome back Sid

The Caps fired Bruce Boudreau. Replaced him with Dale Hunter.

http://espn.go.com/nhl/story/_/id/72896 ... ale-hunter

And the Hurricanes fired Paul Maurice and are going to hire Kirk Muller.

http://espn.go.com/nhl/story/_/id/72900 ... cond-stint

Second time for Maurice to get fired by the Canes.

Alan

The Ducks fired Randy Carlyle, and replaced him with Bruce Boudreau.

http://espn.go.com/los-angeles/nhl/stor ... e-boudreau

Pretty fast for Boudreau getting a new job.

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. -- NHL officials approved a radical realignment plan Monday that will give the league four conferences instead of six divisions and guarantee home-and-home series among all teams.

The Board of Governors authorized commissioner Gary Bettman to implement the proposal pending input from the NHL Players' Association. It could be put in place as early as next season.





A New Look

Here is the four-conference format approved by the NHL board of governors Monday night. Under the realigned format, which still needs to be officially implemented by commissioner Gary Bettman, every team would play every other club in a home-and-home matchup:



Conference "A"




Anaheim



Calgary



Colorado



Edmonton



Los Angeles



Phoenix



San Jose



Vancouver




Conference "B"




Chicago



Columbus



Dallas



Detroit



Minnesota



Nashville



St. Louis



Winnipeg




Conference "C"




Boston



Buffalo



Florida



Montreal



Ottawa



Tampa Bay



Toronto




Conference "D"




Carolina



New Jersey



New York Islanders



New York Rangers



Philadelphia



Pittsburgh



Washington



The league considered two plans to accommodate Atlanta's move to Winnipeg this past summer. The first would have simply moved the Jets to the Central Division and either Detroit or Columbus to the Southeast.

"The simple one wasn't as simple as it looked when you got done with it," Bettman said.

The board opted to go with the more dramatic switch, creating four geographic conferences -- two with eight teams and two with seven.

The new format will increase overall travel in the regular season, especially for Eastern Conference teams who will now have more trips West. But it cuts down on travel for some Western Conference teams, which was a critical issue for teams like Detroit, Dallas, Columbus and Nashville.

"This is not a subject that everybody is going to get their first choice on," Bettman said. "What you try to do is come up with something that everybody can live with, get comfortable with and understands the value of. Because if you ask 30 clubs, you'd probably get 30 different solutions. That's what makes this a difficult process."

The new look has two conferences with seven teams all based in the Eastern time zone: New Jersey, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New York Rangers, New York Islanders, Washington and Carolina in one and Boston, Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Buffalo, Florida and Tampa Bay in the other.

The third conference consists of eight teams in the Eastern and Central time zones: Detroit, Columbus, Nashville, St. Louis, Chicago, Minnesota, Dallas and Winnipeg. The fourth conference has eight teams in the Mountain and Pacific time zones: Los Angeles, Anaheim, Phoenix, San Jose, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Colorado.

The conferences have not been named.

"The chance to stay in our time zone the chance to play two Original Six teams lots (Chicago and Detroit) and other very good teams in that conference and the chance to have every team in the league come into our building every year I think is a real positive," said Mark Chipman, chairman and governor of the Jets.

Teams will play home-and-home series against all nonconference teams and five or six games in their conference. The top four teams in each conference will make the playoffs, with the first two rounds consisting of solely intraconference matchups. Bettman said he will consult with general managers in the spring before deciding whether to reseed the playoffs in the third round or to have pre-determined matchups.

Bettman said he liked the current format that he devised of six five-team divisions but that Winnipeg's move from Atlanta forced some change. He didn't take a stance on either proposal, but simply explained the pros and cons and allowed the teams to vote.

There was about an hour of discussion, and representatives from about a dozen teams spoke before the plan was approved.

"We had clubs, a number of clubs, that were unhappy with the current state of affairs," Bettman said. "In the context of having to make a change anyway, I felt it was important that their needs and concerns were recognized."

Chipman added there was no acrimony in the discussion that led up to the change.

"I think it was a matter of everybody trying to make their points but I got the sense that people were acting in the best interests of the league and there was a compelling argument that what was agreed to today was in the best interests of everybody," Chipman said. "You can't satisfy everybody, everybody knew that going in."

Among the teams pleased with the new alignment plan were the Penguins, whose fears of being separated from cross-state rival Philadelphia were allayed with the radical shift.

"It was important to us to stay with long-time rivals. Not just Philly. And I think it was important to us to make sure we maintained the rivalries that we developed over the years and they're very good rivalries and our fans love to hate some of the teams we play against. I'm sure their fans love to hate us too. So we're encouraged by that," team CEO and president David Morehouse said Monday.

"In the end I think this will be a good thing for the league," he said.

A much better alignment than the one I posted a few weeks ago. It keeps the core rivalries together. It'll be interesting to see how the playoffs eventually are formatted. They're going to do the first two rounds within the conferences - the big question is whether they seed teams 1-4 after those two rounds or if they do a predetermined matchup. I'm curious to see what they name the conferences as well - the NHL lost a little bit of its character when it dropped the old division names (Patrick, Smythe, Norris and Adams) in favor of the bland geographic names.

On a less happy note (other than in Smiffville), the Penguins laid a turd against the Bruins tonight. Two long 5-on-3 PPs generated nothing. Tim Thomas had a rough night - the Penguins kept hitting him with the puck, over and over and over. Poor guy couldn't get out of the way! I think he ended up with 44 saves, but the Pens certainly didn't make him work hard.

Semi-related - my son and I were at the game, and they were selling tickets to skate at the Pens' outdoor rink with a bunch of former Penguins. 500 tickets for $20 each. I first heard about it about 20 minutes before we left for the game and had no idea who would be there or what the price was. Plus, I swear the first report said it was in January because I asked my wife what day of the week it was. Turns out the date is December (which I found out in the third period). I thought $20 was a tad steep, and my wife couldn't figure how I thought it was too much, but I mean, it's not like I've been dying to skate with Alain Lemieux. No, that's not a typo. There are a handful of guys I wouldn't mind skating with and talking to, but I've talked to quite a few of the guys that I'd want to talk to. On the other hand, it would have been a chance to finally get that never-seen Tignanelli-Taglianetti picture. Ah well, maybe next year!

Alan

Yes, there was rejoicing in Smiffville last night. This team hasn't had a regulation loss in over a month.